(6) William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Life and Career

- born in the small market town of Stratford-on-Avon as the son of a successful glovemaker, landowner, moneylender, and dealer in agricultural commodities

- his father later suffered financial and social reverses, possibly as a result of adherence to Catholic faith

- attended the free Stratford grammar school, gained some knowledge of Latin, but did not proceed to university

- married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, had daughter Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith

- connected with the London company of professional actors, Lord Chamberlain's Men, renamed King's Men when James I came to the throne

- became a leading shareholder of the company and the principal playwright

- performed in the Globe, an open-air theatre the company built for itself on the south bank of the Thames (1599), at the court, and at the indoor London theatre Blackfriars (since 1608)

Plays

- had evidently no interest in preserving his plays for posterity, let alone in clarifying the chronology or in specifying which plays he wrote alone and which in collaboration

- wrote plays exclusively for the performance by his company, his scripts existed in his own manuscripts and pirate copies, but none of these manuscripts has survived

- eighteen of his plays were published during his lifetime in the small-format inexpensive books called quartos

- eighteen other plays were collected posthumously in a large folio entitled Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

Early Comedies

> The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1587) and The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1588):

- his two earliest comedies dramatize the ambiguities of his age concerning the freedom of women to act and think independently in courtship and marriage

- in the former a woman dangerously resolves to prove her faith to an undeserving lover, in the latter a woman is brutally schooled in wifely duty by a husband who appears not to merit her service

- the former is also the first of Shakespeare's many theatrical experiments with female cross-dressing, i.e. with the ambiguity of a boy actor playing the role of a girl who dresses as a boy

> The Comedy of Errors (c. 1589 - 94):

- a symmetrical comedy relieved by reflections on family and amatory relationships almost slipping into tenderness

- displays a rare command of the resources of comedy: mistaken identity, madcap confusion, and the threat of disaster giving way in the end to reconciliation, recovery, and love

> Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595):

- the most ostentatiously artificial of his comedies, focusing on word-play rather than on the development of plot

History Plays

- in his first sequence of plays based on English history Shakespeare finds his own distinctive voice

- gives an overreaching moral vision of English history and a political and patriotic statement of some potency

- considers the relation of civil order to central government, suggests that king and subject are linked together by mutual responsibilities, and shows the failure in these responsibilities on the part of rulers (Claudius's usurpation in Hamlet) as well as subjects (peasants' revolt in Henry VI)

- his history plays have continued to shape British perceptions of the national past and of nationhood, to English and European Romantic poets Shakespeare emerged as the leading example in the moulding of a particular national consciousness and the model from which future national historical drama could develop

> Henry VI (c. 1588 - 91), in III parts:

- follows Henry VI, the King of England of the House of Lancaster (1422 - 61 and 1470 - 71) and a claimant to the kingdom of France (1422 - 53), the quest of Joan of Arc and her death at stake, and the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses (1455 - 85)

> Richard III (c. 1592):

- follows Richard III, the King of England of the House of York (1483 - 85), the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, his defeat by Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII, and death in the battle of Bosworth Field, which put an end to the Wars of the Roses

- Richard III is portrayed as a monstrous villain formed by his time dominated by violence and hypocrisy

> Richard II (c. 1595, published 1597):

- in Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V explores the death throes of feudal England and the birth of the modern nation-state ruled by a charismatic monarch

- the dying John of Gaunt of Richard II expresses a vision of an ideal, separate, secure, peaceful, kingly, little island, which however does not exist, and so anticipates the reality of a realm descending into disunity and war as it is exposed in Henry IV and Henry V

- John of Gaunt (1340 - 99), son of Edward III, exercised great influence over the English throne during the minority reign of his nephew, Richard II, and his death meant a final disruption to the fragile political stability

- the play follows Richard II, the tyrannous King of England (1377 - 99), and his insistence on his divine right to unconditional obedience irrespective of his actual fitness to rule, whose exploits were terminated by his deposition and imprisonment in the Tower

> King John (c. 1595):

- follows the reign of King John of England (1199 - 1216), the challenge to his throne posed by the French King Philip who urges him to abdicate, his excommunication by the pope, and his death by poisoning

- features a well developed strong character of the Bastard, a predecessor of Falstaff in Henry IV, who is the only character to be given prolonged soliloquies, often in the form of asides commentaries to the audience

> Henry IV (c. 1596 and c. 1597), in II parts:

- follows the reign of Henry IV (1399 - 1413), son of John Gaunt, successor of the deposed Richard II, but focuses chiefly on Prince Hal, the future Henry V, and his association with Falstaff, Shakespeare's amplest comic invention

> Henry V (1599):

- celebrates patriotic heroism in following the reign of Henry V (1413 - 22), a strong king who united the thrones of England and France, stages the triumph of Agincourt, and also briefly deals with the death of Falstaff

> Henry VIII (also as All is True, c. 1612 - 13):

- a late play, its finest part being the trial of Queen Katharine, the divorced wife of Henry VIII

Romantic Comedies

- exploits the devices of disguise and cross-dressing, but tends to demote such festive fooling to sub-plots and focus on the pains, strains, and pleasures of young love instead

- in his histories and tragedies the author is obliged to reflect on power struggles between men, women are marginalized unless they are denied aspects of their femininity (Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra)

- in his comedies women's integrity and intelligence is allowed briefly to triumph, the successful resolution of each play depends upon the resourcefulness of its woman protagonist (Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Rosalind in As You Like It, or Viola in Twelfth Night)

> A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595 - 6):

- a representative comedy beginning with crossed purposes and ending happily with multiple marriages

> The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596 - 7)

> The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597):

- reintroduces characters from his Henry IV plays, including e.g. Falstaff as a self-deceived wooer of married woman who ends up disappointed and humiliated

- allows for the triumph of romantic love over the well-intentioned schemes of parents and the ill-conceived ones of a would-be adulterer

> Much Ado About Nothing (c. 1598 - 9)

> As You Like It (c. 1599 - 1600)

> Twelfth Night (c. 1601)

Tragedies

- mark a shift to an existential and metaphysical darkening, probably originating in a deep personal anguish of the author, perhaps caused by the death of his father John (1601)

- represent exemplary dramatic falls of kings and princes on whose fortunes depend those of the nations they rule, who fall from a height of influence and honour, and whose fall stirs the proper emotions of pity and fear

- reinforces the portrayal of an uncertain, dangerous, and mortal tragic world by employing the representation of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, as accidental judgements, casual slaughters, and deaths put on by cunning

- his emphasis on mortality reflects the violence of contemporary political life haunted by treason and assassination

- often stages suicide, in earlier plays in accordance with the view of his contemporaries of suicide as a damnable act, as an incomprehensible rash end to present woes (Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia in Hamlet), in mature tragedies as a noble act of classical Roman dignity (see Antony and Cleopatra and Othello)

> Hamlet (c. 1599 - 1601):

- blurs the clean lines of revenge tragedy by making Hamlet contemplate issues veering off from the central one

- Hamlet faces the public problem of how to avenge a political murder in a culture where private vengeance is unacceptable and the private problem of how to come to terms with the death of his father, the accession of his uncle, and the remarriage of his mother

> Othello (1604):

- Othello's suicide is the response of a soldier who must follow through the consequences of his earlier ill-considered resolution if he is to preserve what is left of his honour and integrity

> King Lear (c. 1605, printed 1608):

- the most obviously revised of his major tragedies, printed with different texts in 1608 and in the 1623 Folio

- between 1681 and 1838 played mostly with Nahum Tate's happy ending

- explores the awkward, nasty, and uncomfortable aspects of the human condition in an alien world which questions all human values and all human relationships

- one of his most disturbing plays in stripping the characters of their tragic dignity, offering little catharsis, resolution, or absolution, and silencing the villainous and virtuous alike

> Macbeth (c. 1606):

- explores a monarch's despair at having to live with the consequences of his bloody appliance of autocracy, but also gives much space to the portrayal of the strong defeminized Lady Macbeth

 

Roman Plays

- deal with historical alternatives, but also vividly reflect back on Shakespeare's present (e.g. corn riots)

- shows the threat to the Roman Republic by patrician arrogance and plebeian self-assertion in Coriolanus, a now tired republic commanding an empire in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, and an imperial decadence in Titus Andronicus

- the four Roman plays represent history as a warning against demagoguery and decadence

> Titus Andronicus (c. 1587, published 1594):

- his earliest attempt at tragedy, theatrically vital, but stylistically crude

- responds to T. Kyd's revenge dramas with a sensational replay of his themes and echoes of his rhetoric

> Julius Caesar (1599)

> Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606 - 7):

- Antony's suicide is the proper response of a Roman general to military failure and the only alternative to public disgrace, while Cleopatra's suicide suggests the possibility of a final reunion with a transfigured and heroic husband

> Coriolanus (c. 1608)

Dark Comedies, or, Problem Comedies

- more biting in tone, more uneasy with comic conventions, more ruthlessly questioning of the values of the characters and the resolutions of the plot

> Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602)

> All's Well That Ends Well (c. 1603)

> Measure for Measure (1604)

Late Romances

- develops a fluid dreamlike sense of plot and a highly poetic style

- interfuses comic and tragic themes, focuses on loss and recovery, suffering and redemption, despair and renewal

- contrasts the shortcomings of an older generation with the hopes represented by a new

> Pericles (c. 1607 - 8)

> Cymbeline (c. 1610 - 11)

> The Winter's Tale (c. 1609 - 10)

> The Tempest (c. 1610 - 11)

Narrative Poems

- in search for patronage, Shakespeare devoted his two narrative poems to the young nobleman Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, but the outcome of the patronage is unknown

> Venus and Adonis (1593):

- shares the Ovidian reference, irony, and amused irreverence of C. Marlowe's Hero and Leander (published 1598)

- contrasts the passive male sexuality of Adonis with the active female one of Venus

- follows the courtship of a young man by a wicked goddess, from whom Adonis escapes to follow his adolescent fascination with hunting, but is finally killed by a boar

> The Rape of Lucrece (1594):

- retells the story of the rape of the virtuous Roman noblewoman Lucrece by the libidinous Sextus Tarquinius, son of King Tarquin, and Lucrece's resolute response to her violation in the high Roman fashion, i.e. suicide, which she sees as the only way to restore her husband's honour

> "A Lover's Complaint" (published as an addendum to Sonnets, 1609):

- the confession of a country girl who recognizes that she had been deceived by her lover's empty promises

> "The Passionate Pilgrim" (1599):

- a fusion of several poems published under Shakespeare's name, some of them early versions of his sonnets, some of them extracts from Love's Labour's Lost, and some poems now known to be written by other writers

> "The Phoenix and Turtle" (1601):

- a lyric lament of the death of love's perfection

Sonnets

- the series of 154 sonnets was published in 1609, apparently without Shakespeare's personal supervision and perhaps without his consent

- established the English sonnet form comprising three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg, which came to be called the Shakespearean sonnet

- each of the three distinct quatrains may develop a separate metaphor, the closing couplet may either confirm or pull sharply against what has gone before

- characteristic with great intensity, density, concentration, and compression: often the main idea may be grasped quickly, but the precise movement of thought and feeling is challenging to grasp

- the whole sequence conveys a sense of high psychological and moral stakes

- unprecedented in his choice of a beautiful young aristocratic man (rather than a lady) as the object of praise, love, and idealizing devotion

- equally striking in his portrait of a dark, sensuous, and sexually promiscuous mistress (rather than the usual chaste and aloof blond beauty)

- abandons the traditional scheme of a despairing Petrarchan lover in favour of more various moods of delight, pride, melancholy, shame, disgust, and fear

- sonnets 1 - 17: celebrate the Fair Young Man and urge him to marry and beget children who will bear his image

- sonnets 18 - 126: passionately focus on the same beloved young man, but develop the dominant motif of the destructive power of time which can be countered only by the force of love and the permanence of poetry

- sonnets 76 - 86: disturbed by the threat posed by a rival poet

- sonnets 127 - 152: focus chiefly on the so-called Dark Lady as an alluring but degrading object of desire

- sonnet 144: intimates an emotional love triangle involving the speaker, the male friend, and the woman

- sonnets 153 - 154: plays fancifully with the stories of Cupid and the loss of his phallic brand